Artistic spotlight on Hinduism's blue-skinned savior

‘Vishnu: Hinduism’s Blue-Skinned Savior’, a major museum exhibition, focuses on one of Hinduism’s three major deities. It presents around 170 paintings, sculptures, and ritual objects that were made in India between the 4th and twentieth centuries.

This show at Brooklyn Museum (June 24–October 2, 2011) serves as a brief survey of Hindu art styles as well as an examination of the Vaishnava (Vishnu-worshipping) tradition. An accompanying note elaborates: “Hinduism, the world’s third-largest religion, was first codified in India around 1000 BCE and has been practiced there since that time, perpetually absorbing new beliefs and approaches, while continuing to recognize the sanctity of older traditions.

Each of the three primary Hindu deities—Vishnu the Preserver, Shiva the Destroyer, and Devi the Great Goddess—is believed by his worshippers to be responsible for creating and maintaining the cycle of life, and to be a portal to ultimate salvation. Some Hindus affiliate themselves with one of the three gods, while others worship more broadly. Those who worship Vishnu—an extremely large and diverse group—are known as Vaishnavas.”

Known as Hinduism’s gentle god, Vishnu is easily recognized in paintings by his blue skin. While he is an interesting figure in his primary form, the complexity of Vishnu's character becomes clear when he assumes new forms, known as avatars, in order to save the earth from various dangers. Vishnu’s ten avatars reveal the multiplicity of ways that one can envision and interact with the divine.

The first section introduces the Hindu god in his primary form, with subsections dedicated to his attributes, his consorts, and his legends. The second section examines his avatars, as a group and then individually. The incarnations more frequently celebrated in art are fully represented, with substantial subsections dedicated to both Rama and Krishna. The third section of the exhibition shows some of the ways in which Vishnu has been worshipped, with images of ritual objects.

‘Vishnu: Hinduism's Blue-Skinned Savior’ has been organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, Tennessee. It has been curated by Joan Cummins, Lisa and Bernard Selz Curator of Asian Art.

A precise focus on the global art markets

A renowned cultural economist, Clare McAndrew specializes in the domain of fine & decorative art market. An astute analyst of art-market statistics, she first proved in categorical terms in 2007 that France’s century-long pre-eminent place in the world of art world had been taken over by China. Many experts simply presumed it was nothing more than a blip! But her subsequent report commissioned by TEFAF stated otherwise, underlining the dominance of China.

Her new document courtesy TEFAF (The European Fine Art Foundation) pegs the auction sales in China at around 6 billion Euros in 2010, accounting for nearly 23 percent of the global art market. With a share of 34 percent, the US retained its top slot, whereas the UK with 22 percent slid to third position.

The TEFAF report elaborates: “New buyers and sellers from China and other emerging economies have helped to protect the art market from some of the downside risk it would have been subject to had it still been reliant primarily on the UK, US and other mature European markets.

"Looking forward, wealth and art buying remain highly concentrated in a very small fraction of China’s population, which is a strong indicator for the potential future growth in art sales. When the new middle classes come on stream at the end of this decade another boom in sales is likely and competition for share of this expanding market will intensify even more.”

In the past decades or so, the US, the UK, Germany and France have been the largest art markets. By 2006 China had almost overtaken Germany and France, in terms of auction sales, according to data of Artprice. However, China bucked the trend. In fact, the most noteworthy aspect of her study was the rise and expansion of the Chinese art market. Art sales in both mainland China and Hong Kong scaled a record peak of €4.2 billion (€3.8 billion in 2008), boosting the country’s share of the art market to 14% that year.

Tracing the art market trajectory

Dr Clare McAndrew, the brain behind the founder of Arts Economics, has authored 'The Global Art Market in 2010: Crisis & Recovery' report according to which China has replaced the UK as the second largest global art & antiques auction market. This significant loss of market share can directly be correlated to the highly impressive growth of the local Chinese art market that barely logged in any numbers worth reporting just about five years ago.

The first decade of the new millennium can be said to be a period of constant flux in the art marketplace. According to an estimate, it recorded a new peak in terms of business volumes and value in 2007. However, fortunes took a sudden twist. The next couple of years were filled with an atmosphere of panic and uncertainty marked by a steep decline in overall investor confidence and market value.

The wealth erosion strongly affected buying sentiment globally. After a period of eye-popping boom and subsequent bust, the astounding peak and the stupefying fall, the market started clawing its way back in late 2009, albeit with radically different contours of investing/ collecting, underpinned to a great extent by perceptible fundamental shifts in the mindset of major market players and also its hierarchy of power.

The art market found its feet and sprung back to life in mid 2010, to show its intrinsic strength. This spirit of resilience and recovery was largely driven by China, the US and India, to an extent. The process was hastened by strong spending power of Chinese and Indian art buyers. On the other hand, growth in Europe remained sluggish.

As a result, the distribution of wealth shifted eastwards evident in the number of HNIs (high net worth individuals) in Asia now almost equivalent to Europe, with a higher collective wealth. While the US and UK art markets were experiencing a period of gradual recovery, China continued to boom in 2010, establishing itself as the second largest market.

An ever going debate between tradition and modernity

It would not be entirely correct to state that Modern & Contemporary artists from Indian were not untouched or unaffected by forms of 'tradition'. For instance, The Bengal Revivalists Movement that tool roots during the period from 1907 till 1947 witnessed the Tagore brothers making an organized effort in terms of reviving and revisiting the miniatures.

Another noteworthy name was that of artist Jamini Roy who left his imprint by trying to reinvent, on his part, the captivating Kalighat Pats. The Tamil Nadu based Cholamandal artist village, founded by KCS Paniker in the mid sixties, was considered the cornerstone of the Modern Madras art Movement, evolved an international dialogue initiated around community-based art that was astutely placed within the local idiom of stone, bronze batik and terracotta.

And then in the 1970s, KG Subramanyan worked with tireless zeal to break down the perceived barriers between high art and craft. The renowned artist tried his hand at weaving and toy making.

We also though know how the Progressive Artist Group (PAG) was very much strident about making a move 'forward'. This prominent group of artists formed in Mumbai in 1947 was very vocal about embracing Modernism. This meant there was no chance to look at the past through a nostalgic viewfinder. They refused the idea of harking back to tradition.

Ironically enough, MF Husain himself was a billboard artist and a furniture designer prior to donning the mantle of high art. He still draw on folk elements trying to reinvent them into his work. Many 'Modern' painters of his era or those of the subsequent generations like Ganesh Pyne or Amirta Sher - Gil have sought inspiration in the glorious traditions of India.

In essence, many renowned Indian Modern & Contemporary artists are not isolated or cut off from their roots or traditions even as while traditional artists are showing keenness to imbibe newer formats and media like video in order to express traditional themes like the miniatures.

‘A glass of water’ by Subodh Gupta

A significant show at Hauser & Wirth (New York) incorporates recent works by Subodh Gupta, who now turns his attention to instruments of measurement - those related to the food & drink that all humans measure through either daily consumption or desperately thwarted hunger – as metaphors in a chimerical visual poem about global appetite.

Comprising a group of sculptures, optically incandescent paintings and two slyly illusionist installations, the new work on view further extends his ongoing investigation into the sustaining and even transformational power of everyday objects and activities.

A succinct curatorial essay encapsulates his practice to state: ”Comprising a group of sculptures, optically incandescent paintings, and two slyly illusionist installations, the new work on view further extends Gupta’s ongoing investigation into the sustaining and even transformational power of everyday objects and activities. Buttons and cans, steel cups of water, simple bread dough, and the forks and smears of sauce left upon plates after a meal has been consumed, all serve as elements in the artist’s complex choreography of meaning and oppositional values.

In the world of Subodh Gupta, the most quotidian objects and experiences lie in perfect equipoise between artistic, cultural, and spiritual abundance and emptiness, the twin companions of all who reside in the era of globalization and Diaspora. the trompe l’oeil installation work ‘Atta,’ a simple, found wooden table bears a mound of dough that appears to have been measured out and lovingly prepared, but abandoned in the midst of kneading. Daily bread is the staff of life, but Gupta’s dough is inedible: sprinkled and surrounded by real flour, it is a painstakingly painted bronze simulacrum.

The complement to ‘Atta’ is an installation work from which the exhibition at Hauser & Wirth New York takes its name. ‘A glass of water’ presents another wooden table topped only with a single metal drinking cup. Inside this cup but just barely contained by it, is fresh water that mysteriously remains in a constant and unyielding state of brimming.

Filled beyond capacity and threatening forever to spill at the slightest vibration, his simple but precarious offering serves up a rich metaphor for the almost unbearable tension between luxury and depletion, accumulation and deprivation, acquisition and exhaustion that are the daily diet of exploding international culture.

Blending mythical with the real elements

His central subject and concern is man, through whose aspirations and tensions, desires and disappointments, lusts and unending endeavors, the larger issues of life are deeply introspected. Here, God remains distant or indifferent, whereas the human 'other' is felt by its absence; the solitary male turns the sole site for conflict and resolution.

We are referring to Rameshwar Broota’s practice and process. Analyzing it further, art critic Gayatri Sinha has mentioned in an insightful essay: “The artist imbues his work with undiluted simplicity even as he firmly locates himself within the ordinariness of the burgeoning Indian middle class. A practitioner of meditation (dhyana and yoga) he also felt the contrary pull of the human world. In the early 70's, he was probably the first artist from India who turned outward with severely satirical paintings. Earlier, he had forayed into geometric forms, followed by stark figures of emaciated men, suggestive of the labor in New Delhi's growing streets.

“Soon, the sharp geometrically defined spaces and massive figures evaporated under the insistent scraping and nicking of the blade. The artist realized that a figure need not be imposed on a canvas. Instead it could be coaxed, revealed or evacuated from its depths.” This process unique to him involves the over painting of the canvas with layers of paint. It’s more intuitive, and draws on his love for photography and the intriguing complexities of the photographic process.

A significant transition in the 1980's in his imagery was marked by the ape’s mutation into the Man - essential, transitory, and firmly athletic. He typically employed degrees of sexual suggestion in them to denote erotic potential. A few years ago, he turned to technology to sift through images and explore the various compositional possibilities. This gave way to the extreme close up of the bodily frame that emerged as the locus for his philosophy of man that exists outside the purview of traditional morality or even the possibilities of expiation.

His metamorphosis into a photographer is indeed intriguing. Known for his strong masculine forms - actually intricate monumental drawings – Rameshwar Broota now infuses his photographs with a similar sensibility, albeit with a twist. "The caveman used to scratch & draw the movement of his fellow beings and animals on those dark walls. I believe I must have existed even then as an artist…," so he states of his painterly passion.

A solo of recent works by artist Rajan Krishnan

New York based Aicon Gallery presents a solo show of artist Rajan Krishnan. 'Ancestry' is essentially a logical extension of his past two noteworthy projects, namely ‘Enroute’ (2006) and ‘Memoir’ (2007).

The new large-scale works are akin to a visualized homage to intriguing cultures in gradual transition. He here looks to revisit his native place, only to find the Nila river that once thrived there, nurturing the people around it, now devastated sans its past glory. The placid shimmering currents and golden sand of his memory are not anymore there. Instead what now has remained are dark debris, stark shrubbery and crumbling structures in place of the life-giving waters and luscious foliage.

‘Ancestry’ is a heart-touching panorama of portrait-like paintings of peculiar elements from the once lovely landscape that surrounded the river, rendered against a foreboding grey backdrop without any foreground or background. They tend to focus our attention directly upon his chosen subjects, themes and settings. Masterful detailing is contrasted by the darkly flattened and mystifying milieu, devoid of time and its aftereffects, yet ethereally stirred by an ongoing sensation of both serenity and chaos.

In the collective memory of the flourishing region and so of the artist – the river stands for more than just flowing water. For generations it shaped the lives and culture of the people in South Malabar, and the artist’s home state of Kerala. The Nila River was a lifeline to a vast arena, offering sustenance to the countless villages and cities.

However, the bleak present existence to which this once magnificent icon of India’s rich natural and cultural history has been consigned to leaves Rajan Krishnan’s images – like the river itself – stranded somewhere between our shared past perceptions and the tangible yet continually shifting realities of our today and tomorrow. The solo of recent works by Rajan Krishnan presents poignant images to present a grim reality.